alt Hacker NewsIf there's one thing I wish someone pointed out when I was just starting learning French is this:
é - the accent is pointing up, so it's a higher-pitched e
è - the accent is pointing down, so it's a lower-pitched e
* It's also in their names - aigu and grave, but this requires knowing what these words mean.
Replies
Muromec • today at 5:31 PM
> That's it. That's how it should be explained.
That's contingent on your ability to imagine sounds doing ups and downs.
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umanwizard • today at 6:15 PM
I'm a non-native French speaker, but I am pretty confident that's not true. They are actually different sounds, not just the same sound at a different pitch.
French is not a tonal language like Chinese. Pitch is not used to distinguish between different phonemes.
And ê, when pronounced (most of the cases) it's just a è.
ë, contrary as said in the article (full slop?) is the most complicated and with some exceptions. But there is so few words that use that letter that you just don't have to care.
Just pronounce ë as è when its in (inside) a word and not pronounced at all when it's at the end. The only exception I can think of is canoë (pronounced conoé), but everybody will understand if you say cano.